The access device corresponds for example to a radio access point. This radio access point may be implemented by an access gateway, allowing user devices located in a client site to access a WAN (for “Wide Area Network”) wide-area communications network, such as the Internet. These devices correspond for example to a “Set-Top-Box” TV decoder or a mobile terminal. Some of these devices exchange data within the local network by means of the radio access network, via radio communications channels, notably using the wireless transmission technology based on the radio network standard IEEE 802.11 and its evolutions commonly grouped under the term Wi-Fi (for “Wireless Fidelity”). In order to reinforce the security over the radio access network, the access device may also implement a function known under the name of filtering according to physical addresses, such as MAC (for “Medium Access Control”) addresses. Such a MAC address allows each device to be identified. The function for filtering according to MAC addresses allows the access to be limited to devices whose MAC address is known by the access device. A device whose address is not authorized thus cannot gain access to the radio access network.
The implementation of this function poses the problem of the management of the MAC addresses authorized to connect, notably in the case of devices connecting temporarily to the radio access network. It is generally complex for a user of the access device to define the authorized MAC addresses. In a first step, they need to connect as an administrator in order to execute an administration software application of the access device. For certain types of access points, the administrator must, in a second step, manually supply the authorized MAC addresses. It is recalled here that the MAC address takes the form of six pairs of characters composed of digits, from 0 to 9, and of letters from a to f, for example 59:1e:4a:c4:21:04. For other types of access points, the administrator may activate the filtering without having defined authorized MAC addresses and may find themself subsequently prevented from gaining access to a configuration menu for the function, owing to their access with a non-authorized wireless device. For these reasons, the function for filtering according to MAC addresses is thus generally not implemented.